Related papers: Effect of Chain Flexibility on Nematic-Smectic Tra…
We study elasticity of spontaneously orientationally-ordered amorphous solids, characterized by a vanishing transverse shear modulus, as realized for example by nematic elastomers and gels. We show that local heterogeneities and elastic…
Dense rubbery networks are highly entangled polymer systems, with significant topological restrictions for the mobility of neighbouring chains and crosslinks preventing the reptation constraint release. In a mean field approach,…
Optical birefringence measurements on a rod-like liquid crystal (8OCB), imbibed in silica channels (7 nm diameter), are presented and compared to the thermotropic bulk behavior. The orientational and positional order of the confined liquid…
We present a theory of the elasticity and fluctuations of the Smectic A and C phases in uniaxial, anisotropic disordered environments, e.g., stretched aerogel. We find that, bizarrely, the low-temperature, lower-symmetry Smectic $C$ phase…
We reveal the critical properties of the phase transition towards superfluid order that has been proposed to occur in large spin fermionic systems. For this purpose, we consider the bosonic field theory for fluctuations of the complex…
Recently, complex phase transitions accompanied by the rotational symmetry breaking have been discovered experimentally in cuprate superconductors. To find the realized order parameters, we study various charge susceptibilities in an…
Active turbulence in dense active systems is characterized by high vorticity on a length scale that is large compared to that of individual entities. We describe the properties of active turbulence as momentum propagation is screened by…
Non-motile elongated bacteria confined in two-dimensional open micro-channels can exhibit collective motion and form dense monolayers with nematic order if the cells proliferate, i.e., grow and divide. Using soft molecular dynamics…
The scaled particle theory is developed for the description of thermodynamical properties of a mixture of hard spheres and hard spherocylinders. Analytical expressions for free energy, pressure and chemical potentials are derived. From the…
Using scaled-particle theory for binary mixtures of two-dimensional hard particles with rotational freedom, we analyse the stability of nematic phases and the demixing phase behaviour of a variety of mixtures, focussing on cases where at…
We explore a spin-fermion model with fermion-spin-quadrupolar interaction. In a nematic phase, this interaction reduces to a four-fermion interaction that is a basis of superconductivity. When the coupling constant is positive the…
While twist-bend nematic phases have been extensively studied, the experimental observation of two dimensional, oscillating splay-bend phases is recent. We consider two theoretical models that have been used to explain the formation of…
Numerous soft materials jam into an amorphous solid at high packing fraction. This non-equilibrium phase transition is best understood in the context of a model system in which particles repel elastically when they overlap. Recently,…
In this work we present a simple qualitative model to describe shear rheological behavior of the twist-bend nematic liquid crystals. We find that at relatively low shear rate the effective viscosity decreases with the shear rate manifesting…
A model for filament buckling at finite temperatures is presented. Starting from the classical worm-like chain model under constant compression, we use a mean-field approach for filament inextensibility to find the complete partition…
Biological tissues exhibit diverse mechanical and rheological behaviors during morphogenesis. While much is known about tissue phase transitions controlled by structural order and cell mechanics, key questions regarding how tissue-scale…
The elastic properties of the $B_1$-structured transition-metal nitrides and their carbide counterparts are studied using the {\it ab initio\} density functional perturbation theory. The linear response results of elastic constants are in…
We study the effect of flexibility and bend angle on systems of hard semiflexible boomerangs. These are modelled as two rodlike segments joined at one end with an angle that can fluctuate about a preferred angle. We use a second-virial…
Chiral liquid crystals often exhibit periodic modulations in the molecular director; in particular, thin films of the smectic-C* phase show a chiral striped texture. Here, we investigate whether similar chiral modulations can occur in the…
Spider dragline silk shows well-known outstanding mechanical properties. However, its sigmoidal shape of the measured stress-strain curves (i.e. the yield) can not be described by classical polymer theories and recent hierarchical chain…